Wall Street opens lower after OPEC meeting

NEW YORK (AA) - Wall Street opened lower Thursday with a decline in oil prices.

The Dow Jones fell 40 points to begin the day at 17,749 points. The S&P 500 decreased 5 points to open at 2,094, while the Nasdaq was down 10 points to start at 4,942.

At the opening bell, the American benchmark West Texas Intermediate was down 1.8 percent to trade at $48.00 per barrel as the international benchmark Brent crude fell 1.7 percent to $48.86 a barrel.

The decline in oil prices came after the oil cartel OPEC failed Thursday in its biannual meeting in Vienna to agree on an official production quota.

The market and investors perceived the OPEC result as indicating a global oversupply that is likely to remain, at least for the near-term, keeping the downward pressure on oil prices.

In its previous meeting last December, OPEC did not reaffirm its official quota at 30 million barrels per day, but said it would continue producing at actual output levels, which has exceeded the official ceiling since last year.